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Updated: June 20, 2025
"Well, this is the first start of making a garden," went on Uncle Pennywait. "The ground must be plowed or spaded. Spading is all right for a small garden, but when you have a large one, or a farm, you must use a plow." Mr. Blake owned a large yard back of his house, and next door, on the other side from where the new Porter family lived, was a large vacant lot.
Over they went to the early-potato part of Uncle Pennywait's garden. There, on many of the green vines, were a lot of blackish and yellowish bugs, crawling and eating the leaves. "We'll just give them a dinner of Paris Green," said Uncle Pennywait, "and they won't eat any more of my vines." "What's Paris Green?" asked Mab.
The spots are near the ends and in the middle, and they look like little dimples. Some of them may look very much like eyes, and that is what most gardeners and farmers call them, but they are really the potato's seeds. Mab and Hal watched what Uncle Pennywait was doing. He had a basket in which were some large potatoes and these he was cutting into chunks, letting them fall into another basket.
But before those evenings came Hal and Mab had harvested all the things in the garden, with the help of their father and mother, Uncle Pennywait and Aunt Lolly. "We must get in the pea and bean vines," said Daddy Blake when he saw what a hard frost there had been. "Then we'll thresh them on the barn floor and it will be time soon, Hal, to husk your corn and bring in Aunt Lolly's pumpkins."
"Oh, let's hurry home!" cried Mab. "I want to show mamma and Aunt Lolly and Uncle Pennywait that Roly-Poly is still alive." And so Daddy Blake and the children skated down to the end of the lake, Roly-Poly running along with them. He had barked his good-byes to the engineer, and Daddy Blake and Hal and Mab had thanked the nice man over and over again.
"It is a deadly poison, for grown folks or children as well as bugs, and you must never touch it, or handle it, unless I am with you, or your father is near," said Uncle Pennywait. "Here is some of it." He showed the children a bright, green powder, some of which he stirred into a sprinkling pot full of water. This water he sprayed over the potato vines.
"And my beans are all trampled down," wailed Mab. "Never mind," consoled Uncle Pennywait. "They'll still grow, even if the vines are not as nice as before. A wind storm would have made them look the same way." "And as long as both your crops are damaged, and each about the same amount," said Daddy Blake to Hal and Mab, "you will still be even for winning the prize of ten dollars in gold.
"The poison in the water goes on the potato leaves," explained Uncle Pennywait, "and when the bugs eat the leaves they also eat the poison, and die. We have to kill them or they would eat away the leaves of the vines until they all died, and we would have no potatoes. The potato bugs are very harmful, and we must get rid of them."
It was more fun for Hal and Mab to pick the ripe tomatoes than it was to hoe in the garden, and soon, with the help of Uncle Pennywait, they had gathered several baskets full of the red vegetables. Then Aunt Lolly and Mother Blake made themselves busy in the kitchen. They boiled and stewed and cooked on the stove and there floated out of the door and windows a sweet, spicy smell.
"No, they didn't get in that part of the garden," answered Mrs. Blake. "I think well have some for dinner." "What Cows or egg plant?" asked Uncle Pennywait, winking his left eye at Mab as he made this joke. "Egg plant, of course!" laughed Mrs. Blake. "Suppose you go bring one in for me, Uncle Pennywait."
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